


Glitch in the System: Araignée du Soir

by SystemGlitch



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Pets, spiderpals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 07:49:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14131488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SystemGlitch/pseuds/SystemGlitch
Summary: By K.A small friend happens.





	Glitch in the System: Araignée du Soir

“What is this?”

Widowmaker eyed the package Sombra pushed into her hands moments earlier with narrow-eyed suspicion. She could assume almost nothing from its packaging - a broad rectangle, only slightly larger than the standard toaster-oven and wrapped in brown paper she associated more closely with childhood lunches than wrapping paper. Only the holes poked along the width of its top offered any indication of its contents, and that sole clue - that whatever lay beyond the mute taupe packaging needed air - was plenty of cause of incredulity.

Sombra stood before her, pajama-clad and uncharacteristically sheepish as she worried the hem of her sweatshirt with nervous fingers. It was late - even by their standards - and the only light they had came from the sniper’s bedside lamp. Widowmaker could tell even among the shadows that Sombra was unsure about the gift in the aversion of her eyes and pointedly diverted attention.

Sombra was rarely shy, and by this point Widowmaker knew well enough that the few occasions she was, it was because she was either nervous about something or concerned that something would prove more inconvenient than endearing. Whatever this was, it was clearly intended as thoughtful - something to which she was still remarkably unaccustomed and lacked responses beyond “apprehensive”. That fact considered, the sniper made a concerted effort to dial back her concern.

“Sit with me?” she asked, forcing a softness into her voice she found through trial and error could only exist in conjunction with the other woman’s presence. With its apparition, so, too, did that fight-or-flight sharpness fade.

Complying wordlessly, Sombra shuffled over and sat beside her, tucking one leg beneath herself and dangling its opposite over the edge. “Look. If you don’t like it, I’ll keep it.” she replied at last, lifting violet eyes to meet her own. “Just give it a shot.”

“May I guess?”

At that, Sombra’s hesitancy broke, supplanted by a quiet, sleepy chuckle. “You’ll never get it.”

Widowmaker lifted the package, testing its weight. Presumably, whatever it contained was alive. Overall, it weighed little, but its bottom was packed with  _something_  that gave it noticeable heft. Whatever gave it that weight was compact, as evidenced by the lack of shifting or sound when she tilted it ever so slightly.

“Well?” the other woman asked, notched eyebrow raised with curiosity. “You got three guesses.”

Pursing her lips, the assassin, set the package down before her with definitive poise. “Plant,” she announced.

“Nah.”

“…Plants?”

Sombra shook her head. “You got one more.”

Leveling a long, focused stare on the mystery before her, Widowmaker frowned. Either her partner was being intentionally obtuse with what might define plantlike, or she could rule out any type of flora as a contender. Which meant that, while alive, the contents of the present before her were something at least slightly more complex… and slightly more  _“alive”_.

“Sombra,” she began levelly, reaching across the few feet between them to take the hacker’s hands into her own. “Did you put Toulouse in a box and pretend to give him to me as a present?”

“Maybe you ought to open it and find out,” Sombra grinned.

As if its mundane exterior might betray some precious - or explosive - cargo, Widowmaker carefully slid a thumb beneath one folded edge of the brown paper, then another, then carefully along the bottom seam where tape held the paper to the container beneath it. She revealed, in increments, a clear, plastic pet carrier of sorts, its top comprised of open grating with a flip-up panel at its center. Its inside was a quarter-full with mulch substrate, a few corkwood hides, and a water dish no larger than a standard bar of soap.

In the corner of the container, tucked against the side of the water dish, was a small lump of brown fluff, its pink-tipped legs tucked against its body.

“Oh.”

Sombra scooted around the pet carrier to the sniper’s side, careful to avoid jostling the critter too much. “It’s a peruvian pink-toe,” she explained, looping an arm through her own. “Average to small size, probably a half-year old according to the guy I got her from.”

Widowmaker ran a finger along the edge of the enclosure, watching the small, admittedly soft-looking spider within as it shifted a little, turned about in its place and settled anew between the faux-stone dish and transparent plastic wall. “You got me a spider,” she said, tilting her head.

“A _tarantula_ ,” Sombra corrected. “And, come on, are you really that surprised?”

“No, I suppose not,” the sniper murmured. It was small - likely no larger than a credit chip, if even that, and half its bulk seemed to be a downy, russet-colored fluff covering all but its cephalothorax. The pink toes, a touch lighter than salmon, were, admittedly, endearing. It wasn’t as if the tiny arachnid required much space, and if it was only a standard tarantula, she presumed it wouldn’t grow to require a home much larger than the enclosure in which Sombra gave it to her.

As a child, she would have probably screamed and definitely run. Even as an adult she now recognized only in memories and photographs, spiders were only ever acceptable outside and at a distance, and better yet unnoticed. Now, devoid of the fear that once fueled those responses, she understood them perhaps better than anyone, and accepted them as symbolic of both her function as a Talon operative and, with a note of heaviness she acknowledged as sadness, the circumstances which reshaped her life. While she never harbored any desire to care for one, there was a certain shade of further acceptance in the act, and in recent months she found some small enjoyment in the counterbalance of keeping a select few things in her life alive. What difference was there between, say, the château and this creature? Toulouse? Her relationship with Sombra?

“How do I care for it?” she asked at last, a thin smile tugging at her lips.

“ _Es muy fácil,_ ” Sombra replied, giving her arm a small, delighted squeeze. “Keep her in a place where she’ll be warm - your desk is probably a good bet - keep her substrate a little damp, and keep her water clean and full. I’ve got little pinhead roaches over in my room I’ll bring over in a little, too. Give her one or two of those bad boys twice a week, and you’ll be fine.”

Widowmaker nodded her understanding, watching as the spider, one by one, picked its way along the narrow path between the two surfaces toward toward the less cramped open space at the center of the tank. “It…  _she_  looks soft,” she noted, leaning over to press a kiss to the exposed curve of the hacker’s shoulder. “How long will she live?”

Sombra shrugged. “If she’s a she, anywhere from  five to ten years. Hard to sex a spider, so it’s kind of a crapshoot. If she’s a he, two to five. Either way, she’s gonna get bigger and softer.”

“I assume it is like fish - that they are for looking, not touching?”

“Yeah,” the other woman answered. “You  _can_  hold them, but they don’t really need or want or care about it. Also, they throw their butt hair and it itches like  _fuck_. So, like, maybe don’t.”

Widowmaker returned her gaze to the hacker, her previous incredulity returning. “They throw…  _what_?”

“You heard me.”

The sniper frowned. “Perhaps I will leave her alone.”

Rising from the bed, she picked up the container gently, attempting to jostle its eight-legged resident as little as possible, and carried it across the room where she set it at the back left corner of her desk. Its proximity to both the window and heating system ensured the creature would be warm, but not too warm, and its placement against the wall was an unspoken safeguard against Toulouse’s eternal curiosity.  

“What’re you gonna call her?” Sombra asked, sliding off the mattress. A few, lazy steps later and she was wrapping her arms around the sniper’s waist, cheek pressed against the cool plane of her back. That touch brought the smile back to her lips, the sudden embrace a sort of safety net in a life where safety was more often relegated to an afterthought. Though other lives were possible, she couldn’t say with any certainty she would prefer them, nonetheless find or fall into a place within them as she had in this one. Yet, as the days ticked by, Widowmaker realized with creeping certainty that her place needn’t be solely defined by death alone, and that she, in small doses, could find some separate fulfillment in its opposite.

“I am thinking  _Espérance_ ,” she replied, watching as their new companion explored its home. “From  _espoir_. Hope.”


End file.
